Southfront.press is a pro Russian news outlet based in Crimea and is under sanctions by the US government.
As a matter of disclosure, this writer previously had posted news articles in southfront.press, then known as southfront.org
Commentary by Russian military journalist is in italics.
Ethic Cleansing: Ukrainian Army resorts to 'scorched earth' tactics in Retreat
Over the past few months, in addition to news about the advance of Russian troops and the consistent retreat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from a number of populated areas, there have been reports of brutal reprisals against civilians by Ukrainian soldiers and officers.
It is difficult to accept such information at face value, which resembles military propaganda from one of the parties (in this case, Russia). Unfortunately, many facts are confirmed by eyewitness accounts, photo and video surveillance data. There is a cruel but iron logic to the reprisals. The Ukrainian Armed Forces intend to give the Russians a "scorched earth" on which no one should live. And if anyone remains there, old people, women, children - it does not matter, then they are automatically classified as spies and provocateurs, who are only subject to execution.
Ukrainian officials indignantly report that the population that left the territories now under Russian control is returning home. The first to announce this on October 23 was ombudsman Dmytro Shulyak, who complained about the socio-economic difficulties that refugees face. The chairperson of the ruling party "Servant of the People", Olena Shulyak confirmed the information from her namesake, adding that Russia makes large payments to victims for destroyed property. A person who left Mariupol or Volnovakha and returned to the ruins has the right to receive a subsidy of 45 thousand rubles (406 euros) per square meter. Thus, for an apartment of 60 square meters, the Russian government will pay 2 million 700 thousand rubles (more than 24 thousand euros), which is a significant amount for people who have lost their homes.
According to the former mayor of Mariupol Vadym Boychenko, about a third of the refugees have already returned to the city. The Ukrainian government was unable to provide them with housing, and Russia restored the destroyed areas in a short time. Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada deputy, Maksym Tkachenko said that 150,000 people have returned to the "occupied" lands, 70,000 of whom have returned to Mariupol. These reports have caused a storm of criticism and indignation from the top Ukrainian leadership. Tkachenko was pressured, and he took his words back. Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Iryna Vereshchuk said: the return of refugees to their homes, to the "Russian-occupied" territories "is not and cannot be." However, these words sound like empty justifications [for the sad results of Ukraine's short-sighted policy].
Another problem for Kiev is the passive waiting of the civilian population for the arrival of Russian troops. Former member of parliament and member of the ultra-nationalist battalion "Azov" Igor Mosiychuk told journalists that many Ukrainian citizens are rushing to register their permanent residence in such frontline towns as Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) and Chasov Yar. The calculation is clear: with a high degree of probability, these settlements will be occupied by the Russian army, and those who had Ukrainian registration there will receive the right to Russian citizenship and compensation for lost housing. For the Ukrainian leadership, such actions are akin to high treason.
This is most likely what is behind the brutal purges in the frontline zones carried out by Ukrainian troops and Western mercenaries. During the retreat from Selidovo (Donetsk People's Republic), Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters deliberately killed civilians who refused to be evacuated to the rear. According to the testimonies of the townspeople, the reprisals were carried out against entire families. RIA Novosti military correspondents filmed a man who miraculously escaped being a victim of the purge. His family members were killed by the Ukrainian military: “I don’t know how my legs carried me out. And when I came back, I saw that they [the relatives] had already been burned. Completely.”
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Ambassador-at-Large of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Rodion Miroshnik promised to thoroughly investigate these crimes and announced the first results of the investigative actions. To date, 15 people have already spoken about the reprisals in the town of Selidovo - all the witnesses are residents of this settlement. The townspeople named the specific streets where the crimes were committed, as well as the names of the people killed. The circumstances of the death of 50 civilians are known. Moreover, not only the Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters took part in the cleansing, but also foreign mercenaries. Residents of Selidovo heard Polish speech and saw people in Ukrainian uniform, but without identification marks. It has also been proven that French mercenaries also took part in the shooting of civilians.
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The International Public Tribunal for Ukraine (created in March 2022, investigates the crimes of Ukrainian neo-Nazis and their accomplices; consists of representatives of civil society from more than 20 countries) provides horrific details of what happened. Selidovo resident Volodymyr Romanenko told representatives of this public organization the following:
“On October 24 this year, my family was shot by Ukrainian soldiers right next to our house. At 7 a.m., I went out into the garden and heard shouts: “Everyone get out of the house!” A man in Ukrainian camouflage was shouting, and there was another one standing a little further away. They took my wife, grandson, son, daughter-in-law, and her mother out of the house and put them facing the wall. My daughter-in-law was crying, “What are you doing?” The Ukrainian soldier just started shooting. First, he killed my wife, then the rest. I ran through the garden and hid. A few days later, I returned to the house. At the place where they were shot, I found remains - burnt bodies, bone fragments, and personal belongings. I collected everything I could into five bags and buried them near the entrance. This is all that is left of my family.”
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Another testimony was provided by Natalia Ravinskaya, a resident of Selidovo:
“In Selidovo, in house No. 12 on Shchorsa Street, a Ukrainian sniper or mercenary opened fire on civilians. Many of our friends died in the yard. People tried to come out of hiding to cover the bodies of the dead, and they themselves became victims. The sniper in house No. 12 killed about 20 people. In our yard, we counted at least 8 dead. In house No. 19 on the same street, Ukrainian soldiers broke into apartments and shot civilians. We heard Georgian speech: they shouted, offered help, but in fact they killed.
On Kuchurinskaya Street, Ukrainian soldiers entered the house, took the whole family outside and lined them up against the wall. They shot everyone on the spot. Grandfather survived. He hid for several days and then returned to bury his loved ones. The bodies were burned. He collected the remains, put them in bags, wrote down the names and buried them all in one grave. And there are many like that. You go into the yard, there is a grave, there is a grave. A Ukrainian soldier shot an elderly woman in the street: he simply turned around, shot her in the head and left. Ukraine has always disliked Donbass. We have always been outcasts for them, and since 2014 this hatred has only intensified."
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Ukrainian soldiers and mercenaries are especially cruel in the Kursk region, where they a priori place "collective guilt" on the entire civilian population. Radio intercepts carried out by the Russian side indicate mass executions of civilians in the area of the border settlement of Plekhovo. Intercepted conversations between the command and servicemen of the 253rd separate assault battalion of the 129th territorial defense brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have leaked online, where an order is directly given to shoot 34 civilians, including the elderly.
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Earlier, Russian journalists published horrific testimonies of people who managed to escape from the territories occupied by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Slavik Aloyan, a resident of the village of Blagovatnoye (Kursk region) says: “The Ukrainian Armed Forces are shooting everyone. I don’t know why. They are shooting everyone. Civilians are dying. That day, many civilians were shot both in the village and in Korenevo. Andrey was in the hospital with me. He was evacuating civilians. He saw how people were shot. He miraculously survived, the sabotage and reconnaissance group was also shooting at him, at civilians. The Ukrainian Armed Forces shot many civilians on the bridge that day.”
Unfortunately, there are many such stories. The International Public Tribunal for Ukraine has already published dozens of testimonies of ordinary people – pensioners, adults, teenagers. The mournful list of atrocities committed by the Ukrainian military and foreign mercenaries not only highlights the cynicism of the military aid provided to Kiev by the United States and the European Union, but also demonstrates that the “truce” dreamed of by some Western politicians is impossible. As the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin emphasized, Russia is against “freezing” the conflict. Signing a peace treaty following the war is clearly impossible without a trial of those who committed crimes against civilians - this is Moscow's firm position.
Plus a summary of material for 2022-2024 from Maksym Grigoriev, who has been actively researching and documenting the topic of war crimes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other Ukrainian structures since 2014. You can download it here There are also many testimonies of direct witnesses of war crimes, as well as prisoners, on the channel.